Greene's Anatomy
by The Assassin's Pen
Summary: Beth has taken to people watching in this little patchwork family of hers, and she realizes that there is still something beautiful in the middle of the end. A series of scenes focusing on the quiet, playful moments not shown in the show and the idea that humans themselves are artwork, even in the worst circumstances. Cannon pairings, season varied.
1. When Daryl Saved Judith

Okay. This is the first of a season-varied, timeline non-specific series of experiments I did. I have a deep, sometimes embarrassing fascination with anatomy. I think it's absolutely stunning. Every part of the human form is a remarkable miracle and it annoys me that the only focus in writing when it comes to anatomy is often sexual. In trying to subvert that and explore the other highlights of the human body I decided, with my aunt's encouragement, to write a series of scenes set in the Walking Dead universe to do just that. I don't know if I'll post all of them or if there will be more, or what's gonna happen, but if people like these and request more I'll post it. I have a good 14 pages at this point and I keep thinking of more. I wrote these for me but my aunt encouraged me to post them, in case I'm not the only one that thinks this way.

DISCLAIMER: Sometimes timeline gets a little muddled here. I forget details. I've only watched Walking Dead through once so I took small liberties with things like Judith's age etc. I was really just focused on writing the scene.

* * *

Beth spent a lot of time thinking. What she was thinking about changed dramatically, but she was always turning something over in her mind.

Before the world died she'd thought about boys. She'd imagined her first dance, her first kiss, and she wondered how hard it would really be to just hit the road and live off of her voice—become the next charming country girl on the front of a hit album.

When the walkers began chewing away at her adolescent daydreams she thought about fear. She thought about decay and death and sickness and how God must be angry, how she must not really be saved, how none of her family must be because the rapture had to have taken everyone else away. She was convinced for months that the horseman pestilence had touched their world because what else could explain such grotesque horror?

For a long time, after her sobbing prayers and gasping begging fell on deaf ears she just thought about death. It was all she saw. All she understood anymore. By the time Rick's group staggered onto her father's property it was looking less and less frightening to die. Seeing the torn, animal-frightened look in their eyes told her everything she needed to know and her last shred of hope went up like a cinder. There was nothing left of the world. She thought about death until she was convinced it was all she wanted.

She didn't realize she was still too scared to die until the blood was covering her hands and dripping on the floor. For days after her attempt she felt the icy breath in her veins as she healed and she knew she would never be able to die by her own hand. She kept thinking about death, but it was because she didn't know what else to think about anymore.

When the farm was taken she thought about nothing but surviving, and she couldn't decide if the change was positive. She wasn't really focused on living, she was just focused on outrunning the bony chill she'd never completely forget.

It wasn't until they found the prison and Judith was born that she started to be able to think about something else. At first it felt like there was very little hope for the baby, and Beth couldn't help but think about how even births in their world were tainted. Judith was only alive because Laurie was dead, and if they couldn't find formula her sacrifice would be for nothing. That cold settled across Beth's shoulders as she stared wide-eyed at the baby Carl was holding and it didn't start to lift until Daryl spoke up.

"No way. Not her."

Those few, determined words bloomed an emotion in Beth's chest so warm and so unexpected that it took her almost an hour to figure out what it was. Hope.

Daryl was only the first voice in the line that was forming up between Judith and the darkness that seemed to control their every move. At the end of the world, children had no place. Sophia's loss had made that clear. Carl's broken childhood showed what happened to those that managed to survive. Was her own life not proof?

And yet. She held Judith in her arms before she had any name at all and watched as Daryl and Maggie left and she decided to hope as well. They'd come back. Not her. Not another one. They were not losing anyone else. She held the tiny life crying out for help, the life Laurie had given hers to bring forth, and slowly she was able to think about what living might mean in their new world.

Not surviving.

Living.

She hadn't been able to stop thinking, but her thoughts were a little warmer of late. A little more colorful, a little bolder.

It was part of the reason she wrote. It helped her make sense of what she'd been pondering for hours.

She fiddled with her pen, wishing she wasn't running out of ink and wishing she had more than one color. Art was something she'd been musing on lately—how it was a shame all those singers she'd hero worshipped had been lost. How there were empty museums and how the stitching on her favorite boots was utterly useless. There was no room for art anymore, and the world was duller for it. She did what she could with her own voice, with the appreciation of nature, with the books in the prison's library, but it was like looking back. All the art they had was for the before. How would they process this era? What would be left behind?

There was time only for the present. The present need for food, for shelter, for warmth. The constant runs and planning and dismantling. She'd stopped thinking of killing the walkers as actual killings. She couldn't think about them that way because then what separated them, really? She was alive. The people who lived in the prison with her were alive. They were the only ones who could be killed or die. Walkers had only to be stopped.

She chewed on the end of her pen and wondered why, even though it had been months, she'd been thinking about the night of Judith's birth so much. She'd been watching Judith grow day by day, but her mind kept drifting back to the relief she'd felt when Daryl and Maggie had returned with the formula. It'd been all the soil her mind had needed to really let hope grow. Judith was going to live. Since then Beth had been climbing her thoughts out of the dark and their newfound home in the prison left enough of her mind empty that she was missing art. She sighed, wishing she could draw, wishing more that they had a piano.

She shut her journal and went downstairs, realizing that she'd probably well overstayed her break from Judith. Carol had other duties to attend to, and she couldn't handle them until Beth took over again. She paused just outside of their kitchen area when she heard the low murmur of conversation. She rapped her knuckles on the door frame and peered in, struck by how much the scene before her reminded her of that night she couldn't shake. Carol was sitting at the table, feeding Judith from a bottle while Daryl stood at her shoulder, the warm quirk of a smile lighting his features. His poncho was even draped over his shoulders, and the freshly cleaned crossbow strapped to his back told Beth he had just come back from a run.

"Hey, I can take her back if you want. I'm sorry…I got carried away and lost track of time," she apologized sheepishly.

Carol smiled and gently pulled the empty bottle away. "That's all right, we were fine." She turned and moved to get up, but Daryl held out his hands expectantly and Carol laid Judith in his arms. He cradled her against his chest and rocked, making fond, quiet noises at her as he moved to Beth.

"She should sleep well," Daryl said softly, leaning forward to place the baby in Beth's arms. Beth took her and nodded her thanks to the archer, trying to decide what had struck her so strongly about the image. Daryl straightened up and brushed a gentle knuckle against Judith's cheek before turning to leave and attend to whatever cleaning or skinning or meat packing he had for the day.

Carol got up and stretched. "I'll be helping Rick in the garden, but if you need me don't hesitate."

Beth nodded, smiling. "I've got her, but thanks."

Carol nodded and Beth went back upstairs, taking Judith to her room. The baby was already sleepy, her eyes barely open and her right middle and ring fingers in her mouth. Beth bent down to settle Judith into her blankets and sat beside her, ensuring the baby was comfortable and sleeping soundly before she let her thoughts wander again. She gazed at Judith and thought about the striking contrast that wouldn't leave her mind's eye.

Daryl holding Judith was like seeing two sides of their lives occupy one space. Her soft skin with his callouses and scars, her innocence with his ragged experience, the weapon on his back and the bottle in his hand. And yet there was something so very similar about them that Beth couldn't quite understand. She tucked a finger under Judith's free hand and watched how she gripped it in her sleep. Everyone always talked about the miracle of birth, of life in an infant's first breaths. Why then, did other lives inspire less awe?

With the way the world had gone any life was a miracle, and that's when it clicked for Beth. She was just as struck with awe for Judith's existence and survival as she was for the hunter who cradled her. Daryl's every breath, the warmth that he used unconsciously to soothe and comfort Judith in her first hours of living, was an amazing gift. How had they all been so unconscious of the marvel that was their own existence? She looked down at her hand, clasped tight in Judith's tiny fist, and thought about how they'd each started that way. How they'd each grown into the people they were now. She thought about what went into not only creating a new person, but keeping them alive and encouraging them to grow. There were so many variables, so many factors, and yet they'd taken everything for granted for so long. Why did it take the herds of walking dead to make her realize what living looked like?

Rick passed by her cell while she was lost in thought, and he paused long enough to settle his fond gaze on his sleeping daughter. He didn't enter the cell, presumably afraid to wake her, but he caught Beth's gaze and nodded his thanks, a genuine, if small, smile turning his lips. The way his strikingly blue eyes lit up in his daughter's presence stayed in Beth's mind long after he'd hefted his shovel and left the prison.

Art. That's what they were. The glow of joy brightening Rick's gaze, the sculpture of bone that stood out under his collar as he lifted the shovel to grow food for his family, the callouses on Daryl's fingers from drawing his bow over and over again—this was the art of their era. They were all living art. And Judith was a canvas all her own upon which they'd each left a brushstroke. Because of the heart pumping in Rick's breast and the heart that had stopped in Laurie's Judith had her own fluttering pulse and sleeping breaths. Because of Daryl's warmth and his gentle touch she was growing, and because of Beth's protective eye and lilting lullabies she was bonding.

Beth had always like to people watch, but the nature of it changed. She started to notice little details, like the way she could tell the person approaching by their gait or the way Carl smirked right before he was going to laugh. The way Daryl had stopped flinching when someone got near him, and the way that Carol felt free to speak up and even tease the others during dinner or work or any time they were all together. She didn't know the whole story, but she'd seen how Carol had been subdued and she'd witnessed the scars on Daryl and she knew they both had broken souls still trying to survive behind guarded eyes.


	2. When They Gave Thanks

Well, at least one person liked chapter one so what the heck. Here's the second scene I wrote.

* * *

The evening was unusually pleasant because everyone had eaten well. It was mid-fall and the temperature was starting to drop, giving them the blissful few weeks between summer and winter where dehydration and heat stroke were not immediate threats. Daryl, already gifted with incredible stamina, was going on even longer hunts trying to get things racked up for winter. They had been lucky enough to find several pounds of salt on a recent run and everyone was learning how to make venison jerky.

That night though, Daryl had shot two turkeys and since there wouldn't be enough to save anyway and no-one remembered when thanksgiving was really they ate both of them. Carol spared some flower to make gravy and Carl whipped up the last of the powdered potatoes—made that much better by the first real potato from Rick's garden they'd managed to harvest. No-one had been sick or injured in over a month, the prison was secure, and they'd found a slew of blankets and a good twenty cans of vegetables on their last run. They had a lot to be thankful for.

Beth was laughing, balancing Judith on one knee as the now toddler made a face at her first piece of turkey. She gummed it apprehensively and eventually swallowed it, her uncertain look coaxing chuckles from everyone else.

"Guess she doesn't appreciate my huntin' as much as she did Maggie's," Daryl joked. "I'll have to eat her share. She can have my potatoes." He tilted his head back and dropped another piece of gravy-drenched dark meat in his mouth before sucking noisily at his fingers and squinting at Judith across the fire, his gaze radiating amusement.

Judith gave a hearty cooing and Daryl laughed, scooping up the metal plate his potatoes were on and passing them to Beth. Beth added to her balancing act and patiently spooned potato into Judith's distracted mouth. She kept spitting half of it back out just by forgetting to close her lips and swallow.

"I've been meaning to save this for a special occasion," Rick spoke suddenly, returning to the fire with a small crate in his hands. "But now seems pretty special and if this is going to be our Thanksgiving…" he shrugged, sitting down and pulling out a dusty glass bottle. "There's only four bottles so we'll have to share, although, I think if we all vote Daryl can probably have one to himself since he's the reason we can have this meal to begin with."

He passed the bottle to Carol, who brushed dirt away from the label. "You found cider?" she said, disbelief in her voice. "Where on earth?"

Rick shrugged, grinning. "Sometimes there's a little extra room on a run. I found these under a raided liquor cabinet. All the hard cider was gone, but the regular stuff still had a few bottles that weren't broken."

"I'm surprised Carl didn't sniff this out, he can find any sugar in a two mile radius," Maggie teased, eyeing Carl as she cracked open one of the bottles and took a sip. She closed her eyes in bliss and hummed, passing to Glenn.

"I've been sleeping with them under my bed, that's why," Rick smirked, and Carl rolled his eyes as his father nudged him with his shoulder.

He reached into the crate and passed out the other bottles, catching Daryl's eye and nodding as he tossed one across the fire. Daryl's hand snapped up and caught it out of the air, but when he did he hissed a little. His arm corded as he flipped open his pocket knife to pry away the cap, but he seemed to be having more trouble with it than he should. His brow furrowed and he cursed quietly under his breath. Beth watched him, concern wrinkling her forehead.

"Daryl?" Rick asked, his voice suddenly uncertain.

"I'm fine. Just sore."

"You're stiff, that's more than muscle soreness," Herschel said. "You might have a minor sprain, from all the repetitive work you've done hunting and preparing the meat. The tendons and joints themselves could be inflamed."

"Ain't nothin' my body's not used to doin' already," Daryl said. "I'll be fine by morning."

"That may be but you'll lose dexterity and resilience if you repeatedly injure yourself and do nothing to aid the healing process."

"Noted, doc," he said dismissively, though Beth saw how he held the bottle a little differently as he took a swig. He nodded to Rick. "Not bad."

The night continued in relaxed companionship, and Beth all but forgot about Daryl's injury until he passed something to her and she realized his fingers were trembling with exhaustion. Rick had long ago taken Judith and put her to bed, retiring himself along with Carl and Herschel. Maggie and Glenn were on watch and Carol was washing up. It was just she and Daryl watching the end of the fire and fighting to keep their eyes open with such full bellies.

"All right," Beth said, taking the bag he'd passed her and setting it aside. She grabbed his hand before he could withdraw completely. "We're taking care of this."

He frowned, trying to pull his hand away. "Takin' care of what?"

"Your pain. I can tell it's hurtin' you, you've been moving weird all evening. Your hands and wrists are too important not to take care of, Daryl Dixon."

"Ya sound like your old man," Daryl mumbled, giving her a sideways glance as though too embarrassed to look at her full on. "I said I'll be fine by morning."

"Or you can start feeling better now," Beth said, gently feeling along his forearm. "Just relax. This is my thank you for the turkey. It's not that I don't appreciate the deer, it's just that I can't remember the last time I had something that tasted so much like normal."

Daryl grunted softly, but he had stopped trying to pull his arm away. Instead, his sharp eyes were fixed on Beth's ministrations, as though curious.

"Massage can help get the blood movin' again, speeds up healing. Besides, if you're all tensed up you're gonna make things worse. A massage can relax you and get rid of the strain," Beth explained, turning his hand over in hers and resting it on her thigh. She pressed her thumbs into the softer flesh at the crook of his elbow, tracing the taught string of tendon connected to his bicep.

 _Living art_ , she thought as she pressed a little deeper and felt the powerful rhythm his blood made as it flowed through his brachial artery. Her father may have been a vet, but they lived on a farm far from most hospitals and ever since the apocalypse had started she'd been learning everything she could about first aid, including basic names for important things that you didn't want cut.

She worked her way down, pressing firmly into the bundles of lean muscle and sleek tendons that composed his forearm. His fingers twitched a little and he gave another hiss of pain, but when she looked up his eyes were closed and he was working through it, his chest rising and falling in measured breaths. She rolled the irritated area gently beneath her thumb until she felt something release and Daryl let out a breath. She swallowed, distracted by how even his breathing sounded different than everyone else's.

She'd been noticing things like that more and more lately. At first it was the way they each held themselves. Rick's spine was almost always straight. Carl slumped a little unless he was around Rick and unconsciously mirroring him. Maggie tended to lean ever so subtly towards Glenn if he was around, and he to her. Daryl either had his shoulders thrown back like he was ready to brawl or he hunched them, there was no real in-between. Carol was slowly stepping with more confidence, her head up and shoulders back, sometimes almost as far as Daryl's. The differences in posture made sense. Different bodies, different personalities.

But breathing? Something so universal and basic and yet she was sure Daryl's sounded different than anyone else in the group. She used to share a room with Maggie, so her breathing had become a baseline against which Daryl's veered sharply. At the moment it was shallower than it should be, both because of pain and Daryl's uncertainty about her touch. Normally though, and she wondered how long she'd known this for, his breathing was deep and even, like he was one of the only people who'd figured out how to use their entire lung for each breath. It made him quieter, and it dawned on her belatedly that he'd probably trained himself very young to breathe that way while hunting. He'd been hunting so much the quiet method had become his natural state.

Or maybe he'd learned to be quiet so he wouldn't attract attention as quickly. Maybe those deep, efficient breaths had also saved him from being hunted, working like the spots on a faun.

Beth had seen every scar on his back when she'd gone in to check on him the night after he'd found Sophia's doll. She'd tiptoed, a little nervous to be near the rough hunter, but determined to finish her task. His back had been to her and she was shocked to the point of feeling sick when his mangled flesh stood out in the light of her lantern. Suddenly his testy behavior made a world of sense and Beth felt her fear of him evaporate, replaced by an overwhelming pity. She was glad he was soundly asleep as she checked his wounds and covered him again, careful to shield his secret from anyone else who might glance in on him.

She shook herself back to the present as she followed each tendon slowly, dipping her fingers to the vulnerable flesh just below the pad of his thumb and running them the length of his palm, massaging each run of bone and muscle independently. His breathing had eased as he relaxed and she worked, tracing the hard swell of his wrist and turning his hand gently until she felt the stiffness melt away. She lay his arm down and reached for his other, repeating the process. She could feel his eyes on her but she didn't meet them, listening instead to the unique ebb and flow of his lungs and wondering distantly if his heart beat differently as well.

She got lost tracing the veins that sprawled like roots into his forearm and across the back of his hand, picturing the intricacies of the vessels she couldn't see. She'd seen simplified drawings of the human circulatory system at school, but they were nothing compared with reality. She thought of the elegant arch of arteries nestled deep inside Daryl's chest and mused that if there was a way to scan that instead of a fingerprint maybe the world would have more respect for the person to which it belonged. She wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to witness a heart working, all without exposing it with crude steel edges. It was a miserable shame that in order to understand one of the keys to life they'd had to hack apart the layers of architecture above it and deprive it of its purpose.

At first, the sight of dismembered walkers had made her pale with fear and deeply sick to her stomach. Now, their decaying, miserable shells only made her profoundly sad. With the soul long gone a walker was like a lacerated Van Gogh.

She glanced up at Daryl when his breathing hitched again as she found another tender spot and gently worked it out. The fire was painting the fine edges of his cheek and collarbones with an orange light and the contrast only served to highlight the nervous twitch of tendons in his neck or the pause in his breathing as he tried not to pull away. She glanced at his chest and then back to her work, thinking about what a relatively thin layer of skin and sinew and fluid and bone separated that precious bundle of hollow muscle from the outside world. She pressed her thumb discreetly into the pulse point lacing his wrist and for a moment allowed herself to picture his heart, pumping healthy and strong, even after more than forty years of faithful work. Daryl depended on that unwavering power, they all did, and she'd barely even thought of it until recently.

Not only living art, but hidden art. She'd felt some profound uncertainties about God in the light of the last year or so's events, but watching Daryl flex his fingers and nod his sheepish gratitude made her reconsider. At the very least God had to have had a finger in designing the DNA that dictated the slope of Daryl's nose and the line of his jaw. She thought about how, even this young, Judith was showing traces of her father and her mother in a brand new combination the universe had never seen before. Only a creative God could have decided to make the beauty of each of their forms go beyond the surface. She supposed that God, being God, could have just made humans functional blobs with no real explanation of how they worked. Instead, he'd laced together muscle and braided it with vein, placing the unseen light of life in the spark of the brain.

 _Fearfully and wonderfully made_ , she thought as she stared into the last of the fire and gave in on keeping her eyes open.


	3. When Rick Laughed

This is set slightly before season 4.

* * *

No one really thought about jogging or running marathons during the walker apocalypse, so when Glenn found a sport section in the complex they were looting he brought back six decent heart-rate watches, complete with the chest straps that meant they were accurate to a point rather than shoddy approximations. Herschel immediately saw the benefit with the lack of EKG monitors and the like at the prison and the watches went into the medical store. With the amount of people who joined them from Woodbury there was no way they had enough but with any luck they shouldn't have more than six people at once to keep an eye on.

Just to make sure they were accurate and could be relied upon in the case of an injured person needing monitoring, Herschel took the lot outside and they made a game of it. Maggie, Glenn, Rick, Carl, Michonne, and one of the boys formerly from Woodbury all donned the monitors. Beth propped Judith up on her hip and held a cracked stopwatch in her free hand, ready to clock their race around the inner perimeter fence. Daryl was sitting on top of one of the vehicles that they'd converted into a lookout point, fletching bolts and chewing on a splinter of pine as he watched without comment. They'd offered him a spot in the race but he'd snorted.

"I do enough runnin just to keep ya'll fed."

Beth shrugged and took her place on the ground by his car. She supposed that was fair.

Herschel settled next to her, sitting on an overturned bucket. He had a stethoscope around his neck and a blood pressure cuff and spare stethoscope in one hand.

Beth's brow furrowed and she shifted Judith on her hip. "You worried about them?" she asked. "It's not that hot today."

He shook his head. "No, but strain is a good time to check health. Really I should be checking everyone, get a baseline. It'll make things easier to figure out if something happens."

She swallowed. His tone of voice hadn't said if. When. He wanted a baseline so that when something happened they might survive it. She squared her shoulders and jaw. He was just being smart.

"Yeah you think that, but you've been wrong before. Remember Texas?"

Carl groaned and he and Rick came into view. Michonne was grinning, stretching as she went. Beth grinned. The trash talking had started and Rick was in the lead.

"Yeah, you keep talking, but—" Carl paused, spinning on his heel and snatching something by Rick's ear. "Oh—what's this?" He squinted at his pinched fingers. "A grey hair?" He tutted, shaking his head. "You sure you should be running, old man? You might have a heart attack and keel over."

Rick grinned, cuffing Carl in the side of the head and snatching the hat when he dodged it. "My heart's just fine. It's your short legs you should be worrying about," he said, smacking the back of Carl's legs with his hat.

Carl skipped over a clod of dirt and snatched the hat back, planting it on his head with a flourish.

"I don't know what you're all competing for, everyone knows who's gonna win this," Maggie said, knocking Rick's shoulder as she passed him. "Glenn's the best runner this side of the Mississippi." Her tongue poked between her teeth when she grinned before she spun and kissed Glenn's cheekbone. Glenn raised his eyebrows at them, but said nothing. Clearly Maggie was trash talking enough for both of them. Instead of chiming in, the boy from Woodbury, Nick, just jogged past them all, shooting them a challenge.

"All right," Beth said, striding forward and gesturing with the hand holding the stopwatch. "The course is around the inside fence, turn right at the front corner of the prison, race across the front, over the cooking area, and back around to here. You can get over or under or around the cookin' spot any way you want. Just don't step on the grill or Carol might shoot you." She glanced up at Carol, who was standing watch in the tower and within ear-shot. She looked down, nodding her confirmation to Beth's threat. Beth nodded and turned back to the racers, who were stretching while they listened. She pointed at Carl, then Michonne. "No cheatin' and cutting through the garden."

Carl pretended to be offended, but Michonne only grinned, side-eyeing Beth.

"When you get back here find your own pulse and count for a whole minute, then compare it to what the watches say. I'll be clocking your time, so if there's a tie I have the final say."

"When you've got your final count come see me. I'd like to check everyone, get a healthy baseline since no-one's been sick or wounded in a while." Herschel said.

"All right, everyone form up," Beth said, raising her free hand. "When my hand goes down, go. Ready, set, run!"

She dropped her hand and clicked the watch at the same time, and in a smear of disturbed grass they were off. It had been unusually and very helpfully rainy lately, so instead of the cloud of dust that normally gathered splatters of mud kicked up the back of everyone's legs and speckled Carl's chest from where he was just behind his father. Beth grinned, regretting suddenly that she was holding Judith. She wanted to run after them, see what was going to happen. Daryl seemed to notice because a whistle turned her head to see him leaning half off the car, beckoning for Judith.

"Common, gotta make sure Rick and his deer legs ain't cheatin," he said as Beth darted over. He hefted Judith onto his leg and settled back, giving her a spare feather to play with. Beth nodded her thanks and sprinted to the next loop in the track, but not before catching one of Daryl's rare, real smiles. The kind that made it to his eyes. He was completely focused on Judith.

Beth almost slipped in the mud as she skidded to a halt, but she made it to the turn before any of the others. She was clutching the stopwatch in a sweaty hand and smiling as Rick put on a burst up the hill and sprinted past most of the group. Glenn was moving steady, as though saving his energy so the only real contender was Michonne. She was almost stride for stride with Rick, and that was impressive since his legs were easily the longest.

At least, that's what Beth thought until Carl came blurring out of nowhere and straight up tackled Rick to the ground. At first Beth thought he'd meant to shoulder his dad over and had slipped, but as he scrambled to his feet and took the new lead she knew he'd used the muddy patch strategically.

"You are beyond grounded!" Rick laughed, scrambling up, his entire left side muddy. He took another long stride, scooped up a healthy handful of slime, reared back like a pro pitcher, and hurled it bodily at his son. The spatter nailed Carl between the shoulder blades.

"That's playing dirty, Grimes!" Daryl called from his perch.

"He started it!" Rick said, leaping a low wall made of crates and gaining another foot on his son.

"Yeah? And where'd ya think he got it?"

Rick's smile was positively impish. Beth glanced at her stopwatch as they all finished the curve and started along the front of the prison, heading for the cooking area they'd made on the porch. She took off that direction, keeping pace with Maggie for several strides before diverting and hopping up a concrete chunk where she could see better. Carl was only a foot or so in front of Rick by now, since he'd decided to go around the grill and Rick had gone _over_ it. Beth's eyebrows shot up. Say what you want about Rick's lanky build, that man could run and leap like an Olympic hurdler. She wondered what Carl and Judith would be able to do when full grown, since both of their parents had been built like scarecrows.

Michonne darted half over, half under the cooking area, and Maggie sprinted around it all together. Glenn and Nick both took Rick's path, or tried to, and ended up getting muddy boot prints on one of the makeshift tables.

They were coming around to the final stretch when Beth made it back to the car, panting herself and relishing the adrenaline coursing through her like it was fine wine. Her hair was a tousled mess almost completely free of its tie, her chest was heaving, and she had a stitch in her side, but none of it was caused by walkers and that felt like a triumph.

She leaned forward, watching the group come in, thinking Rick was going to clear it with Carl at a close second. At the last moment Glenn came tearing out of nowhere full tilt, his sprinting swallowing up Rick's longer strides in seconds. He came to a stop at the end of the finish line so hard that he wiped out in the torn grass and lay on his back gasping but clearly happy. His fist was in the air when Rick, Carl, Michonne and Nick came to a shuddering stop and Maggie flopped onto him, kissing him a little too long and causing him to gasp harder when she drew her head back and propped herself up on his chest.

They each took a moment to check their watches against their pulse counts, and when they confirmed all but Nick's were accurate Rick went to where Glenn was laying and held out a hand. "Well done, you earned that. I never saw you coming."

Glenn clapped his hand onto Rick's forearm and pulled himself up, still breathing hard. "People never do."

"All right Herschel," Rick said, spreading his arms as he walked over to the truck. "I'm all yours."

Herschel nodded. "Glenn, let me check you while Beth looks Rick over. The rest of you, go another lap to keep your adrenaline up until I can check you."

Michonne shot Carl a mischievous glance and the two were off with Nick and Maggie just behind.

"What am I lookin for?" Beth asked, uncertain as she fitted the stethoscope to her ears and tested the diaphragm. It was still in remarkable condition considering how long it had gone without use. They were lucky the prison's office had had anything at all, let alone stethoscopes that weren't dry rotted and completely useless. Rick was standing patiently in front of her, mud clinging to the stubble of his growing beard and sweat sticking his shirt to his chest, which was still falling heavily with each breath.

"Just make sure he sounds healthy, listen to his lungs and make sure Carl's unfair accusations about his age are actually unfounded." Herschel's tone was even but his eyes twinkled with the joke. Rick huffed, throwing the vet a playful glare.

"Thanks for the confidence."

"All right," Beth said, pressing the stethoscope to the side of Rick's chest, listening to his lungs first. She closed her eyes to concentrate better and felt the warm press of his ribs as they expanded and contracted to accommodate what sounded like clear, healthy lungs. She shifted to his back and lay her palm against it, fascinated with the artful ridge of his spine as it pressed into her palm. His lungs sounded clear from there too and behind the great rush of air she could hear the rapid-fire from his heart.

"Hold your breath for a moment if you can?" she requested, shifting the bell to his left breast, just next to his sternum. She almost didn't need the stethoscope his heart was pounding so hard. She could feel its force hit her hand even through Rick's chest wall and every full snap of the valves was loud in her ears. She listened to the powerful rhythm for several long moments before her brow furrowed and she pulled the earpieces out. Rick's expression faltered.

"Something wrong?" he asked, glancing from her to Herschel.

"I don't know. Don't take this the wrong way, but how old are you?" she asked.

"Forty. Why? Did you hear something?"

"No, not exactly. What was the highest heartrate you got on the watch?"

Rick thought a moment. "About a hundred and eighty. Maybe hundred and ninety. I feel fine though. Wasn't any pain and I got my breath back all right." He glanced at his watch. "I'm down to a hundred or so now."

"I know. It's probably nothing." She glanced at Herschel, who was finishing up Glenn's blood pressure, unwrapping the cuff with a noisy rip of Velcro. "Daddy, I think you should hear this."

"What's wrong?" he asked, limping over to them and propping himself up against the car.

"If he's forty his maximum should be no more than two-hundred or so, right? His heart sounded steady but I'm afraid it was going too fast."

Rick glanced between them again, shifting a little. "I really do feel fine."

"You probably are, let me just see for myself," Herschel assured gently, pressing first his stethoscope, then his hand against Rick's chest. He waited so long Beth started to fear she was right, and the look in Rick's gaze said he was thinking the same thing.

"You gonna give us a diagnosis or what?" Daryl spoke up. He'd gotten off the truck and was joining their circle, Judith propped on his hip. Beth could sense worry in his tense stance.

"Well Rick, you sound healthy to me, and I don't feel anything out of the ordinary. If you didn't have any pain then your heart is probably just conditioned to handle higher demand than most men your age."

"That would make sense. I ran quite a bit even before everything went down—I don't know how much of that I lost in the coma but it can't have been everything." He looked as relieved as Beth felt. The last thing she wanted to be was the one who discovered their leader had a fatal heart condition.

Herschel took his time checking everyone else with Beth's help, and aside from a slight murmur Michonne was already aware of, they were all doing pretty well considering the nutrition options. Daryl had handed Judith off to Carl and was back on top of the car, aiming at a herd bunching up against the fence, attracted by all the commotion.

He tossed his head and whistled, catching one of the fence cleaner's attention. "Hey, Roy, you quick with your hands?"

Roy, a straw haired stick of a kid, jumped when Daryl called him and turned, nodding apprehensively. Beth couldn't blame him. She'd be apprehensive too if Daryl was pointing his bow in her general direction, even though she knew how good a shot he was.

Daryl squinted, adjusting his bow against his shoulder. "Good. Grab my bolt and pull it back through the fence before four-eyes over there has a chance to fall. Got it?"

"I—I'll try," Roy said, uncertainty coloring his tone. Before anyone could tell Daryl that this probably wasn't a good way to test the accuracy of his self-carved bolts he'd settled and pulled the trigger. The bolt flew through both fences and into the walker's head with a quiet thunk. It moaned and staggered, but Roy snapped out of his shocked daze in time to grab the bolt and pull it to safety.

"Atta boy," Daryl said, already aiming another. "Duck." Roy all but hit the ground as Daryl shot again.


End file.
